~ King Henry VIII in A Man For All Seasons by Robert Bolt

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What’s It All About Really?

Once upon a time, I started blogging. I was helping out with my parish youth group, and all the little junior high girls in my small group seemed to have accounts on this thing called xanga. So I signed up for an account too, and started writing things. And I kept writing. Through ups and downs, joys, discoveries, disappointments, moves, deaths, all kinds of things, I kept writing. Five years later my life is radically different from how it was when I began (for one thing I’m not helping out with the youth group anymore, though one of the little girls from my small group recently showed up in the swing dancing class I teach now at the local college), but the blog is still here, chronicling it all.

However, as much as I love my blog, I began to realize that maybe xanga wasn’t quite the right home for it. I needed something a little more… grown up. It was time to move. I had had some good experiences with WordPress, so I decided to trust them with my baby. In April of 2010 I started cross posting between the two blogs. Little by little I added my archives, and now all five plus years of blogging content are fully available on my new platform. Check out The Vault in the right hand column to take a little trip through my back story.

What’s the deal with the blog title?

I’ve always loved the movie A Man for All Seasons, which is closely adapted from the play with the same name by Robert Bolt. In one scene Henry VIII comes to visit Thomas More, and meets More’s daughter Margaret. The king tries to show off his knowledge of Latin, but is quickly eclipsed by the much more intellectual young woman. He then seizes on his athletic ability as an arena in which she cannot compete, pointing to his muscular leg and proclaiming, “That’s a dancer’s leg, Margaret!”

When I started dancing in 2005, the muscles in my legs became rather nicely defined (I’m actually very fond of them). One day one of my sisters saw me across the room going on tiptoe to get something off a shelf. She exclaimed over my legs, and I replied with the Henry VIII quote. We both laughed a lot, and the next day I changed the title of my blog.

What’s up with all the nicknames?

While I may choose to put details of my daily life out there on the interwebs for the delectation of total strangers, my friends and family haven’t made that choice. So I give them what small protection I can by using nicknames for them. Some of the names are plays on their real names, some the end result of long chains of connections, some allusions to literary characters or just someone the individual reminds me of. One person earned his nickname when he sent out a mass e-mail that started with, “I’m Spain.” Sure, he meant to say he was in Spain, but still. That was his name from then on. If you actually know me, and want to know who someone is, or why I chose a particular nickname, just ask me offline, and I’ll be happy to fill you in. If I don’t know you, you’re kinda stuck. Sorry about that.

What’s up with all the Saints names as post titles?

I’m Catholic, and I really like saints. No, really. There are so many of them, and each one of them has a uniquely interesting story. I like to think of them as part family, part personal heroes, and part my own fan club. After all, we’re all part of the Body of Christ, whether we’ve made it to our final destination (them) or still working our way towards it (me). So I like to remember them. Plus, it’s a different way of marking time. Back in the day, people didn’t mark days by saying “today is March 31” (or whatever), but by saying, “it was six days past the Feast of the Annunciation.” People remembered things by associating them with holy days and sacred events. In a way, all time became sacred. So this is my small way of participating in that, of remembering the days, not just by calendar dates, but by the feasts of all the holy men and women who went before me.

There are so many saints that each day of the year is actually several saints’ feast day. When I was picking which saints to remember, I tended to lean strongly toward women, modern saints we know a little more about, saints who spoke English (all languages are one to God, but it amuses me to think that they might be able to understand me a little better), and Asian saints. When I was a baby my family took a Vietnamese refugee family who were related to two of the Vietnamese Martyrs. Because of that, I feel like I have a connection to this incredible group of saints too.

If you’re interested in seeing my personal calendar of Saints, here it is:

Sarah Whittle, coral stitch: You can use different thread thicknesses or change the angle of the knot to give different effects. Coral stitch can be used on straight or curved lines as well as being used as a textured filling stitch. When using as a filling stitch place the knots into spaces between the knots of the previous row .